New book shares insights from Steve Jobs' 1st boss

In this photo taken Wednesday, Mar. 20, 2013, Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, right cheers his son, Brent Bushnell, CEO of "Two-Bits-Circus," a Los Angeles idea factory focused on software, hardware and machines. Nolan Bushnell was the first guy to give Steve Jobs his first full-time job in Silicon Valley at Atari. Two Bit Circus is a unique hybrid of intellectuals, creatives and performers. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
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In this photo taken Wednesday, Mar. 20, 2013, Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, right cheers his son, Brent Bushnell, CEO of "Two-Bits-Circus," a Los Angeles idea factory focused on software, hardware and machines. Nolan Bushnell was the first guy to give Steve Jobs his first full-time job in Silicon Valley at Atari. Two Bit Circus is a unique hybrid of intellectuals, creatives and performers. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
/ AP

Bushnell dispenses his advice in vignettes that hammer on a few points. The basics: Make work fun; weed out the naysayers; celebrate failure, and then learn from it; allow employees to take short naps during the day; and don't shy away from hiring talented people just because they look sloppy or lack college credentials.

Many of these principles have become tenets in Silicon Valley's laid-back, risk-taking atmosphere, but Bushnell believes they remain alien concepts in most of corporate America.

"The truth is that very few companies would hire Steve, even today," Bushnell writes in his book. "Why? Because he was an outlier. To most potential employers, he'd just seem like a jerk in bad clothing."

Bushnell says he is worried that Apple is starting to lose the magic touch that Jobs brought to the company. It's a concern shared by many investors, who have been bailing out of Apple's stock amid tougher competition for the iPhone and the iPad and the lack of a new product line since Tim Cook became the company's CEO shortly before Jobs' death. Apple's market value has dropped by 36 percent, or about $235 billion, from its all-time high reached last September.

The incremental steps that Apple has been taking with the iPod, iPhone and iPad have been fine, Bushnell says, but not enough to prove the company is still thinking differently.

"To really maintain the cutting edge that they live on, they will have to do some radical things that resonate," Bushnell said. "They probably have three more years before they really have to do something big. I hope they are working on it right now."

Bushnell is still keeping busy himself. When he isn't writing, he is running his latest startup, Brainrush, which is trying to turn the process of learning into a game-like experience. He says he hopes to fix an educational system that he believes is "incorrect, inefficient and bureaucratic - all the things you don't want to see in your workforce of the future."